Raina's Story (9 page)

“You were polite to me at school in front of everyone.” Her tone was accusatory.

“I—um—I couldn't stand for that creep to think he'd broken us up. That wasn't very fair either.”

She agreed. He'd acted petty, but in truth, she hadn't wanted Tony to think he'd broken them up either. “I heard that Tony's dad's been transferred again and that they'll be moving over Christmas break. It doesn't seem fair, you know? He came here long enough to ruin our lives and then he's gone.”

“He didn't ruin our lives,” Hunter said quietly. “I did.”

His admission twisted in her heart like a knife. Their relationship had been fractured, like a glass hitting concrete. The shards lay around their feet and she wasn't sure what to do. “So now what?”

He tucked a piece of her hair behind her ear, and his touch made her heart soften. He still had the power to do that. “Let's sit.” They settled onto the plush sofa without touching. She
could tell he had something else he wanted to say. Her heart beat faster and her mouth went dry. “Stepping back these few weeks gave me time to think.”

“About what?” He was going to break up with her. She felt it in her soul. He had apologized and now he would sever them forever.
Don't cry!
She lifted her chin.

“About what I want to do with my life.”

She said nothing, tried to concentrate on keeping her breathing slow and steady.

“I've been offered early acceptance to a small Bible college in Indiana. I'm taking it.”

His pronouncement stunned her.

“I've met all my high school requirements, except attendance—you know how they want us in the classroom for X number of days. My counselor, Mr. Dodds, got me a special waiver. I'm leaving right after Christmas.”

“Y-you're not going to finish high school?”

“Technically, no. The college has offered me a scholarship. By starting in January, I'll get a head start on the fall freshmen.”

“What kind of scholarship?” Her lips could hardly form the words.

“Biblical studies, with a minor in psychology.” When she said nothing, he added, “It's a new program for pastoral students.”

“You're going to be a
minister
?”

“That's what I'm trying to decide, Raina. I
want to know if it's what I want to do for the rest

of my life. I
have
to know.”

“And if it is?”

“Then I'll go to seminary after college. It's a long road.”

And it was a road that didn't include her. “Holly never said a word to me….”

“Holly doesn't know. Only Mom and Dad and a few teachers at school know. I just got my acceptance letter a few days ago.”

“But you've been planning this.”

“Not for long. The pastor at my church recommended me to the college. It's his alma mater and he hustled things through.”

“And what about you and me?” she asked quietly, steeling herself for his answer.

He was quiet, so quiet that she began to think he wasn't going to answer. “Do you know how long I've loved you, Raina St. James? Ever since the first time I laid eyes on you, when you were thirteen.” He answered his own question. “Holly used to talk about her friends at the dinner table, but I was a year ahead of her and who cared about my sister's little girlfriends? Then one day, you came over. You were wearing jeans and a tee with pink and blue flowers and your hair was in a ponytail, and you sat on the floor in Holly's room playing Scrabble with Holly and Kathleen.”

Raina remembered vaguely. She hadn't gone
over there often because Vicki had kept her in after-school programs when Raina had argued that she was too old for babysitters. Vicki worked long hours, and she'd refused to allow Raina to go home to an empty house. Holly had always talked about her brother, Hunter, but Raina didn't lay eyes on him until she was thirteen. “When I did get to come to your house, you were at basketball practice, or soccer or something.”

He nodded. “Plus, I couldn't let my kid sister know that I thought one of her little friends was the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen.”

He'd never told her any of this before. “That would have been uncool for sure.”

He grinned. “Then you three left middle school and came to Cummings High. Mom made me take charge of Holly that first day. I protested, but secretly, I wanted to be hanging around when she met up with her two best friends. I was grumbling at her about having sister-dork duty when you came through the door and… and I thought my heart would fall on the ground at your feet.”

Raina remembered every moment of that day, and how hunky she'd thought he was, and how much she'd fought to keep her opinion from Holly. Besides, by then she'd been burned by Tony and had sworn off boys. It had taken Hunter almost the entire school year to finally ask her out, and by then Holly thought it was
okay for her best friend and her brother to date. They had been a couple ever since. “And so now it's over,” Raina said, holding back tears.

“Not over,” Hunter said, clenching his hands into fists.

“You're leaving. I'm staying. What would you call it?” She would break up with him first. Maybe it would hurt less.

“I'll be home when the college semester's over, and I'll work here this summer.”

“And then you'll leave again.”

“You'll go away to college too.”

“Not for another year.”

Impasse. They sat side by side on the sofa facing forward, their shoulders barely touching. In the quiet of the great house, Raina heard the faint rumble of a movie playing in the theater room below. Her friends would be expecting a grand announcement about her and Hunter getting back together. They would be thinking that things were going well, that the two who were meant to be together were still together. Fresh tears filled her eyes. She would learn to live without him. She would have to.

Hunter broke the silence with “Can we stay together until I leave for college?”

She shrugged. “If you like.”

“I'm not giving up on us.”

“You're the one who has to figure things out, Hunter. Not me.”

She heard him take a deep shuddering breath. “When I'm with you, I want you. I can't think straight.”

She wanted him so badly that she ached. “We should go downstairs. They'll want a full report.”

“What should we say?”

“That all's well, I guess. For now. It's what they want to hear. I don't think I can say anything else… not tonight.”

“All right.” He reached behind a cushion on his end of the sofa, extracted a wrapped box and handed it to her. “It's for your birthday.”

She'd forgotten it was still her birthday. The fact seemed inconsequential because she was losing the only thing she wanted, the one person she loved. She took the box, beautifully wrapped in silver paper and an explosion of ribbon.

“I had it wrapped at the store,” he said, as if apologizing. “I'm all thumbs with paper and tape.”

She sniffed, blinked back tears and tore the paper with trembling hands. The box itself was blue velvet, and inside, nestled in a bed of white satin, was an exquisite glass angel, about ten inches tall. “She's gorgeous.” Raina lifted the clear figurine from the bed of satin. The angel wore a removable gold halo encircled with small, sparkling jewels.

“The woman at the store said this was num-bered—only so many of them were made and
then the mold was broken. Those are real Austrian crystals.”

“You shouldn't have spent so much money on me.”

“I want her to watch over you while I'm gone.”

Raina couldn't look at him because her throat ached from the strain of not crying and she was afraid she would lose all composure. She laid the angel back in the box. “Thank you.”

He stood and so did she, but before she could take a step, he asked, “Can I… would you mind if I held you?”

“I don't mind.”

He put his arms around her, pulled her gently to his chest and rested his cheek against the top of her head. She buried her face in his sweatshirt, drawing the scent of him into her very pores. They stood that way for a long time and she wept. When she pulled away, she swiped underneath her eyes and finger-combed her hair. Hunter pulled up his shirt and blotted the moisture off her cheeks with the soft fabric. All she wanted to do was run her hands along his bare skin and make him kiss her until it hurt.

“Ready?” he asked.

“Sure.” She put on a happy face for their friends. She and Hunter would give them what they wanted—the two of them together again…at least for a few more weeks. She cradled the box with the glass angel, and Hunter
laced his fingers through hers. As they walked, she thought about the news video she'd recently seen of coverage following a cataclysmic earthquake. Buildings had been reduced to a pile of rubble and cars had been crushed and turned over like toys.

The images had horrified her, but what she recalled now were the views of the great cracks in the earth around the site. As the world below the surface had shifted, the earth above had cracked apart, and where there had once been solid ground, the surfaces were separated by a chasm. No amount of soil would ever bring the broken halves together again.

Well, Raina's world had shifted and broken apart too. And she could think of nothing that could put it back to the way it once had been.

“T
HEY COULD
have told me. It's not like I don't live in the same house or anything!” Holly was mad and railing to Raina about Hunter's leaving. A week had passed since Raina's birthday and by now it was common knowledge that Hunter would be going off to college right after Christmas. “How can you act so calm about it?”

Raina had just picked up Holly on a cold Saturday morning and they were going to the hospital for an extra volunteer shift. Kathleen had not come with them. “I'm sad about it,” Raina said. “And I'm not calm. Whenever I think about it I want to cry, but if I start, I won't stop.”

Holly slumped in the passenger seat, crossed her arms and looked sideways at Raina. “Sorry. I didn't mean to go off on you. I should have kept my mouth shut. Dad's always on my case about the way I spout off.”

“It's all right.”

“Hunter's already packing up and he and Mom are buying stuff for his dorm room. Dad's
going to take off work and drive him up. Of course, I'll get his clunker of a car. Not that I can drive it until I turn sixteen in May—” She clamped her hand over her mouth. “I'm doing it again. Sorry.”

“It's all right.” Only her mother had known the depth of Raina's brokenheartedness. Vicki was amazingly sympathetic; more sympathetic than Raina had ever expected. “I'm so sorry, honey,” Vicki had told Raina. “I know it hurts.”

Vicki hadn't offered unwanted advice in an attempt to make Raina feel better. Nor had she said dumb mother things like “You're young. There'll be others,” or “This will pass. One day you'll look back on this and wonder what the fuss was all about.” The only thing she'd said that even hinted of adult-slanted wisdom was “No one knows why, but sometimes you meet the right person at the wrong time. And sometimes you meet the wrong person at a right time. The trick in life is meeting the right person at the right time and being able to know the difference.”

If that was true, Raina knew she'd met the right person for herself. She loved Hunter and always would.

“I know Hunter loves you, Raina,” Holly said, as if reading Raina's mind.

Raina stared straight ahead, concentrating on her driving. “Sometimes love isn't enough,”
she said. Holly fell silent, apparently all out of comebacks. If there had been another girl, Raina would have fought like a wildcat to keep Hunter. But how did a person compete with God?

Raina and Holly signed in at the Pink Angels station and made plans to meet for lunch in the cafeteria. Holly zoomed away, eager to get to her little charges on the pediatric oncology floor, but as Raina was attaching her pager to her belt, Sierra stepped into the room. “Oh, good, you're here today. I wasn't sure if you'd come. I have a message for you.”

“What's up?”

Sierra handed Raina a piece of pink paper. “A Mr. Charles wants to see you down in Hematology. He left the message late last night. Said he'd be there all day today and then again on Monday. He said it was important.”

Raina didn't know Mr. Charles, but the hospital was so big, she wasn't surprised. “I'll check it out.”

The blood unit was on the second floor, and on Saturday the area wasn't crowded. She quickly found Mr. Charles sitting behind a desk. When she introduced herself, his face broke into a smile. “Ah, Miss St. James… nice to meet you. Edward Charles, chief lab tech.”

“Raina. Everybody calls me Raina.”

He shuffled papers and found a file folder. “We received a call from Alexandria, Virginia, last night, Sacred Heart Hospital. It appears that you're a possible bone marrow match for one of their patients, a twenty-six-year-old woman with leukemia.”

Raina felt confused. “Me? But how—?” Then she remembered that the summer before, Holly had insisted that Raina and Kathleen donate a blood sample to the National Bone Marrow Donor Program because of her favorite patient at the time, Ben Keller. The registry, linked nationally via computers, routinely searched for compatible bone marrow donors and matched them to cancer patients who needed healthy marrow to fight their disease. The odds of being matched were low, but still the registry was a lifesaving tool for patients out of other options.